


Everything Changes

by msred



Series: Starting Over [14]
Category: American (US) Actor RPF, Chris Evans (actor) - Fandom
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chris Evans's family - Freeform, Comfort/Angst, Cute Kids, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Issues, Holidays, Long-Distance Relationship, Love, New Years, POV Female Character, POV First Person, POV Original Character, Protective Chris, reader - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21784681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: I'd told myself I would bring it up after a year of being actually, truly together. Any sooner seemed presumptuous, but any longer seemed dishonest and like I was potentially wasting his time. It hadn't quite been a year - we were 18 days short, actually - but it just didn't feel right to wait any longer. I didn't want to tell him on our anniversary that I'd been keeping something so huge, so important, from him, and I certainly wasn't comfortable waiting any longer. So, I'd tell him that morning, before he took me to the airport to send me back home. And I'd just hope with all my heart and soul that when he put me on the plane he'd do so still wanting to see me again.
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor) & Reader, Chris Evans (Actor) & You, Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Reader, Chris Evans (Actor)/You
Series: Starting Over [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423663
Comments: 42
Kudos: 63





	1. Confession

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [This is It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20753828) by [msred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred). 



> 1.) Timeline - this story takes place just a month or so after "Thankful," the last story that I posted. It also takes place over the Christmas/New Year's holiday break that is referenced in "This is It."  
> 2.) We once again have unnamed characters who are repeatedly referred to using different combinations of adjectives and common nouns. This is for the same reason as in "Work in Progress" - they are real people who have not chosen to be public figures. We all know they exist, but I figure it would at least be respectful not to use their names.

_11.5 months together (January, Year 3)_

I was just the smallest bit disoriented when I opened my eyes and let them adjust to the near-darkness so I could take in the barely familiar space. But, I looked across the pillow and found the very familiar nose, subtle freckles scattered across the bridge and gentle bump toward the top, the reddish beard with those flecks of gray he was just starting to have to come to terms with, the beautiful, dark eyelashes fanned across strong cheekbones. As was more true with every passing day, looking at that face grounded me, made me feel safe and solid and comfortable. The fact that he was there made it okay that I was waking up in a room I'd never woken up in before, in a bed that wasn't mine, or his, which I'd spent the past almost two weeks waking up in. 

His arm lay heavy on my hip and I considered, seriously considered, scooting in closer and letting that arm curl around my back to hold me tight to his chest the way that I knew it would, even as he slept. But I could tell from the changing color coming in around the blinds that it was nearly dawn, which meant the alarm he'd set the night before would be going off soon. 

A door opened and closed down the hall, one of the kids maybe, going to the bathroom, or his mom, getting up early to make sure she could see me off, even though I’d insisted she really didn’t have to. A couple days after Christmas, Chris had suggested staying at his mom’s the night before I had to head back to my place in Virginia. Her neighborhood was only about 20 minutes from the airport, whereas his house was on the other side of town. He’d pointed out that my flight was early as it was, and it would be nice to get an extra hour or so of sleep, though I hadn’t argued with him to begin with. Mrs. Evans had originally offered for us to stay with her on Christmas Eve night, and though she’d been understanding when Chris told her he wanted us to start Christmas morning just the two of us, just for a little while, before we joined the rest of the family, I could tell she was a little disappointed. I was pretty sure that was _actually_ why he’d suggested staying with her, and it was why I hadn’t hesitated to agree. I couldn’t help but feel bad, though, that both she and the kids, who’d insisted on staying too, would be getting up much earlier than necessary just so they could see me off. Still, under the guilt was a healthy helping of gratitude and affection for all of them. 

The display on the alarm clock on the nightstand by Chris’s side of the bed illuminated; it was five minutes until the time he’d set it to go off. I wished more than anything that I could freeze the time, stop those 300 seconds from ticking by. I was warm and comfortable, and not just in the physical sense. Each time I got to fall asleep with him wrapped around me and wake up to that beautiful face in front of me, I loved it a little more and found it a little harder to let it go when our always-too-short time together came to an end. And _that_ morning, that morning I truly wanted nothing more than to stay exactly where I was. I didn’t even mind that he wasn’t awake at the moment, I was perfectly happy just lying there under the weight of his arm, watching his chest rise and fall with his steady, heavy breaths. I didn’t have much time left - I guessed I was probably down to around 200 seconds - but I gave in to my earlier impulse anyway. I inched closer, not wanting to wake him even a few seconds before the alarm, and tucked myself against his body, my head nestling under his chin. Just like I knew it would, his arm tightened around me until his hand wedged between my ribs and the mattress. A hundred fifty seconds, 170 if I was lucky, to lay there and soak it in, to breathe him in, before the alarm went off and the bubble was burst.

Far too soon, the alarm sounded, music pouring from the speakers and prompting a groan from deep in the back of his throat. Rather than wait for him to let go of me and roll over to turn it off himself, I pushed myself up onto my left elbow and reached across him with my other hand. I didn't turn it off completely, but I turned down the volume of the music until it was just background noise. I laid back onto my back and Chris rolled half onto his stomach, draping himself across me and burying his face in my neck. "Hey.” I loved his voice, especially in the mornings, even deeper than usual and husky with sleep. “Good morning."

"Morning." My arm was hooked under his chest and partially around his back, and I ran my fingertips lightly up and down his spine and stared up at the ceiling. 

He pushed himself up onto his forearm just enough to look down at my face, his other hand gripping my hip. "Hey, what's up? You okay?"

I still refused to turn my head, unable to tear my eyes away from the subtle texture on his mom’s ceiling. "I have to tell you something."

"Okay, shoot.” He prodded at my hip a little, rocking my body side-to-side, when I didn’t respond. A few more seconds went by and when he still didn’t get the reaction he was looking for, or any reaction at all, he pushed himself up more to look down at me, his elbow digging into the mattress and his shoulder and bicep supporting the majority of his weight. His eyes sought mine, but I squeezed them closed, trying to hold back the tears pricking behind them. I was unsuccessful. “Hey, whoa whoa whoa.” He lifted his hand from my hip to collect the errant tears on his thumb, first the left side, then the right, cupping my jaw on that side in his palm when he was finished. “What's with the tears? No tears, sweet girl."

I breathed in deeply and tried to ignore the stinging behind my nose and in the back of my throat. He waited me out without saying anything, silently passing his thumb back and forth over my cheek. Once the tightness in my throat had loosened enough that I thought I could speak clearly, I kept my eyes closed and told him, "I made a deal with myself that I would tell you this after a year, because waiting any longer would feel dishonest and like I was potentially wasting your time.” I drew in another breath and it stuttered in my chest. “But telling you any sooner felt presumptuous, like, like I was assuming too much about the future, about what you want from me, from us. And I know we're not quite at a year yet, but the next time we'll be together is our actual anniversary, and I don't want to do that,” I felt the tears threatening to come back and rushed to say what I needed to say, the words spilling out on top of one another, “and then after that it'll be March, and I don't want to wait that long, but I don't want to tell you on the phone, and-"

"Baby.” He cut me off and his voice was tight. “Just tell me. Please."

I pulled my arm from under him and brought both arms to my stomach over the comforter, rubbing the soft fabric repetitively between the thumb and forefinger of one hand while the other hand wrapped around that same wrist. "I,” I trailed off and forced my eyes open, though I still couldn’t meet his, instead turning my head on the pillow to stare at the veins running along the inside of his bicep, making his hand fall from my cheek. It landed on my pillow, but he brought it to curl around the side of my neck. I spit out the words I'd tried, unsuccessfully, to find a graceful way to deliver. “I can't have kids.”

It was quiet for a second before he said, with surprisingly little emotion, “I don’t understand.” 

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” I turned my face back up to the ceiling and brought my hands up, covering everything except my mouth, “I probably, I know I should have told you earlier.” I couldn’t be still, shifting my arms yet again so that my hands were at my sides, gripping the bedding in tight fists. I knew the right thing to do, the _strong_ thing to do, would be to look him in the eye and just be straightforward. But I wasn’t that strong; I never had been, and I certainly couldn’t be then, when I was quite sure the conversation had at least a 50/50 chance of ending with him telling me, respectfully but firmly, that he thought it was time for us to part ways. So, I continued to study the ceiling.

“But I just, I felt like telling you sooner would be like assuming that you _want_ to have kids with me, and I don’t know if you do or not. I, I don’t know how much of a future you see with me beyond the next couple months, and, and so I didn’t want to freak you out by bringing up something that you hadn’t even thought about, or that you thought was irrelevant because you wouldn’t want that with me, or because I was thinking too far ahead.” I wished, not for the first time, that I didn’t have anxiety that forced me to talk well beyond when I knew I should, to second-guess everything I said and ramble in a poor attempt to ensure I got my point across. He still hadn’t said anything, but he slid his hand back up onto my cheek and gently turned my head until I was forced to either close my eyes or look at him. I truly wanted to do the former, but I forced myself to do the latter. Still, I couldn’t meet his eyes, so I stared at his mouth as I spoke. “But, I couldn’t wait any longer, because if that’s a deal breaker for you, I get it. And I want, I want you to be able to get out before I waste any more of your time. And a year is a long time to lose, but, you’ve still got time. If this is it for us, if it means we’re done, you’ve still got time to, to be happy. With someone else.”

He tucked my hair over my ear and slid his hand back until his fingers laced into my hair and he held the back of my head. “You were scared to tell me. That’s why you’re crying.” The words should have been a question, but he said them with such confidence that they were a simple statement of fact. He wasn’t asking me, he was telling. I hummed and nodded and he massaged my scalp with his fingertips before _actually_ asking, “What are you scared of, baby girl?”

“I don’t, god,” I gave in and let the tears flow again, a single sob working up out of my chest. He turned a little to recline back into his pillow, against the headboard, and wrapped his hands carefully around the tops of my arms so he could pull me over onto him. My chest lay along his legs and my head landed on his stomach. Once I’d gotten settled there he brought his right hand to the center of my back and slid his left one down my right arm to lace our fingers together and bring them up to rest on his lap. After a couple more deep breaths I went on, staring at our connected hands. “I love you so much, and the past year, longer than that, even, it's been so good, and these last couple weeks, the holidays, it's just all so much better than I ever hoped to have again, _after_ , and I just feel …” I shifted down a little and turned my face to press it into the cotton of the pajama pants he wouldn’t have been wearing if we’d been anywhere other than at his mom’s, with three unpredicable kids just down the hall. I let the soft flannel soak up the tears that leaked out of my eyes then turned my head so that it still rested high on his leg but my voice wouldn’t be completely muffled. “I don’t want to lose you, lose _us_.”

His fingertips drew circles over my back, between my shoulder blades now. “Why would you lose me?”

“Because, if you stay with me, I, _we_ can’t have kids.”

“Okay.”

“Chris.” I sighed and shook my head. I wished I could believe it was as simple as he made it sound with that one word. I knew better, though. “I’ve seen you with your niece and nephews. Hell, I’ve seen you with babies and kids you don’t even know, for that matter.” I knew at that point that I should turn, look up at him, even sit up a bit so we were eye-to-eye. I couldn’t though, because I was convinced I would see how right I was, how drastically everything had just changed. I did, at least, push myself up until my cheek rested on his rib cage on his right side. I pulled my hand from his and brought it up to trace over his ribs on the other side. “You, you were _made_ to be a daddy. And I know you want that. I don- Who am I to take that away from you?”

“Who _are_ you?” He sounded incredulous, almost angry. “Oh my god. You really don’t get it, do you?” He went quiet and I held my breath until he spoke again, his voice soft “Baby, look at me.” I didn’t move and he reached up with the hand I’d just let go of to tilt my chin up toward him. “ _Look_ at me.” I rested my chin on his stomach, just above his belly button, and looked up at him through wet lashes.

“Yeah, I love kids. And I’ve thought about having my own, for sure. But if the choice is between you,” he swiped his fingertips under one of my eyes to once again gather the moisture there, “and a hypothetical future baby? Come on.” He squinted and wrinkled his nose as he shook his head. “You said these past weeks were better than you expected to get? That goes both ways, you know.” He draped both arms around me, crossing them over my back and resting his hands on opposite sides. “From day one, and don’t forget,” he narrowed his eyes at me, “my day one is earlier than yours, I’ve been happier with you than I can put into words. And when I try, you don’t believe me anyway,” he rolled his eyes and shook his head, “but that’s a conversation for another day. Right now, I just need you to understand, I’m not willing to give you up over this.”

“But -”

“No.” His voice was sure, solid. He left no room for argument. “I’ve known you for a year and a half. We’ve been partners for, let’s go ahead and say a year. And I’ve been in love with you almost just as long. I _know_ how happy I am because of that, because of you.” His hands tightened on my ribs. “And newsflash, sweetheart, I'm _40_ _.”_ He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head as he looked down at me as if to emphasize his point. _“_ I'd already started to come to terms with the very real possibility that I might not become a dad, at least not biologically anyway, and maybe not at all. So you can’t have a baby.” He dragged his hands across my back and over my shoulders to hold my face in his hands, lifting it gently off his stomach, just enough that he could look at me more squarely. “We’ll deal with that. Together. I don’t,” he shrugged, “I don’t know exactly what that looks like right now. I don’t need to. Maybe, I don’t know,” one thumb drifted down to trace over my bottom lip before tucking under my chin to hold my head up so that I had no choice but to keep looking at him, “there are other options. Surrogates, and adoption, if that’s something you want. Foster care, even. Whatever. That’s also a conversation for another day. Right now all I need is for you to know that unless this is something you’re willing to push me away over, it’s not something I’m willing to give you up over.” I searched his face for any sign that he was being less than 100% honest. I looked for him to avoid my eyes, for a subtle frown to cross his lips, anything. I couldn’t find it. And so, of course, I reacted in the most irrational way possible, I cried. Again. “Shh, hey, c’mere.” He hooked both hands under my arms and pulled me up until I was sitting beside him. Then he bent at the waist to slide his left arm under my legs at the same time that he wrapped the right one around my ribs to pull me up most of the way onto his lap.

I finally gave in and allowed myself the comfort I’d been craving since the alarm woke him. My butt still rested on the mattress, but my legs were pulled up onto his, my knees practically at his chest, and he pulled my body against him so that, for all intents and purposes, I was curled almost into the fetal position on his lap. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my face into his shoulder. “God, I’m such a wreck.” I spoke directly into his skin; it was a wonder he could even hear me. “I don’t even know how you put up with me.”

He pulled back to look down at me and shook his head.“You better be joking.” 

I was 100% serious, but I didn’t want to argue with him over that. Instead, I nuzzled my cheek against his shoulder and breathed him in. I (and my anxiety) had honestly convinced myself that I wouldn’t have the chance to do that again. I still wasn’t entirely convinced that he was as okay with it as he said he was, but, selfishly, I wasn’t willing to keep questioning it. I was content to let him hold me close against his chest, alternating between pressing kisses to the top of my head and rubbing his cheek against my hair. I knew there was still a chance that once I was gone, on a plane back to Virginia while he had time to sit at home and think, surrounded by his own close-knit family, he would change his mind, realizing he actually cared about having kids a lot more than he’d thought he did while I was there in bed with him. But I pushed that thought down in favor of trusting him. I had no choice, really, unless I was willing to push him away, which I wasn’t. Besides, after a year and a half of having this man in my life, I had so far not been given any reason to doubt him, aside from my own irrational anxiety. And on top of everything else, there was the simple fact that it felt good to be there, in his arms, pressed against him. I’d done the ‘right thing’ enough for the day, I just wanted to do the thing that _felt_ right.

“Hey,” his right arm was wrapped low around my back, and he brought his left hand up to trace a line, down then back up, between my right shoulder and my elbow, “I don’t want to make things worse, or upset you even more by bringing it back up, but I do want the air to be completely clear about something. When I said I didn’t understand, I meant because you’re on the pill. You take it religiously. You have an _alarm_ for it.”

I sighed, and as I pulled back enough to speak clearly I saw goosebumps pop up on his skin where my breath washed over him. “Yeah, I can, I can _get pregnant_ . I just can’t carry to term. Not safely, anyway. I had some, some _trauma_ when I was younger, apparently, and-”

His head whipped around to look at me, eyes wide, frantic, “Tr-”

I pressed a hand into his chest to try to calm him as I cut him off. I should have known that was a bad choice of words, that he would react negatively to the word ‘trauma’ in relation to anything remotely related to sex. “Yes, just in the medical sense, not the psychological sense. Or the legal one.” I watched the tension release from his shoulders, watched his chin drop a little as he exhaled, felt his left hand come down to the small of my back. I wanted so, so badly to lean forward and press my lips to his jaw, but a significant part of me was still afraid, even as I tried so hard to trust him, and if he’d reacted poorly when I kissed him - flinched, or pulled away, even involuntarily - I don’t know that I would have been able to handle it. So instead I went on. “When I was a teenager, there was stuff happening inside my uterus that’s _not great,_ the beginnings of a problem that the doctors maybe could have cut off at the head if something had been done about it at the time. But I didn’t know at the time. I didn’t find out until a few years ago, actually.”

His brows lowered and he looked back at me with obvious confusion, “How-”

I just shook my head. “We didn’t have health insurance most of the time when I was a kid. I knew that going to the doctor would mean a huge financial strain, so I didn’t go, didn’t tell my parents I needed to go, unless I felt like I was nearly dying.” I felt his arms tightening around me as I talked and he looked back at me with concern. I only shrugged. At the time, it had been normal to me. Looking back, I considered it just another part of my story. “I think I went to the doctor maybe five times my entire childhood. My mom used to seem so proud when she would tell people about my strong immune system, how I never got sick.” I didn’t think I needed to tell him that was just more reason for me to fake it. As a kid, there was nothing on earth that meant more to me than making my parents or grandparents proud. It hadn’t changed that much as an adult, the targets of the pride had just shifted. He was very aware of that about me. He even scolded me, sometimes, for putting so much pressure on myself to make everyone else happy.

“Then I hit puberty, and I’d learned, through my school’s less-than-fantastic reproductive education program, that it often took a long time for periods to become regular. So when mine weren’t, when they didn’t follow any particular pattern or calendar and they hurt like hell, I didn’t say anything about it. Turns out I should have.” I inhaled deeply through my nose and huffed the breath back out through my mouth. It was still frustrating to think about all the times I spent curled around a heating pad because I couldn’t force myself to stand, or the times my period surprised me, coming anywhere from two weeks to six months after my previous one. Or, worst of all, how the first time I’d gone a few months without a period when I actually had a boyfriend, who I most certainly was _not_ having sex with, my father forced my mother to take me to the doctor to see if I was pregnant. I still wasn’t sure which was worse, the complete lack of trust in me when I said I couldn't possibly be pregnant, a distrust I’d done nothing to deserve, or the fact that he’d never cared about my issues until then. 

“The doctor explained the details to me when I was diagnosed a few years ago, but I don’t remember them now. Honestly, I’m not sure I understood them then. All that I really needed to know was that I can get pregnant, it’s not likely but it _is_ possible, but my uterus is a ‘hostile environment’.” I pushed off his chest to sit up straight and made air quotes with my fingers, “And if I did get pregnant, there would be a lot of complications as the fetus grows. Most likely the fetus wouldn’t make it past the middle of the second trimester, at most, but if it did, it would get really dangerous for me. Either my body would reject the fetus early on, or it would basically start attacking it later. It almost certainly wouldn’t end well for the fetus, and there’s a good chance it wouldn’t end well for me, either.” I brought my hands down to rest on his ribs, a few inches below his chest, and I watched my left thumb trace over the words of his tattoo as I finished. “That’s _why_ I’m so religious about the pill. It’s not just about having a baby I maybe wouldn’t be ready for.”

He pulled his arms from where they still wrapped loosely around me and closed his hands around mine. He lifted them and brought them to his chest so that our forearms ran up his torso and I was pulled back in a little closer. Then he leaned his head in until his forehead rested against mine, “I need you to know that what I’m about to ask is because I love you and I can’t imagine a world without you in it, not because I think I have any right to tell you what to do with your body,” he pulled back a few inches to watch me as he spoke, serious and concerned, “but, why haven’t you just had something done to eliminate the risk? Get your tubes tied, or a partial hysterectomy?”

I nodded to let him know that he wasn’t saying anything that hadn’t already occurred to me. “I thought about it, but I was married.” I shrugged, gently enough that my hands and arms didn’t pull away from him, “I only had one partner who would potentially be getting me pregnant. He was good with not having kids anyway, even before we found out about my issues, and as much as the idea makes men squirm, vasectomies are so much easier.” I knew he didn’t mean to, but he flinched just a little. “They’re so much less invasive,” I insisted gently. “I mean jeez, they’re outpatient procedures. So it just made more sense for him to do that. It was easy, quick, and effective. But then,” I chewed on the inside of my bottom lip for a second, “well, you know what then.” I dropped my eyes to look down to where our hands rested in the center of his chest.

He just nodded and rubbed his thumbs over my knuckles. “And I guess it makes sense that it wasn’t something you jumped to do once he was gone. You had a lot on your plate. ”

“Oh,” my head shot back up and I shook it emphatically, my eyes growing wide. “No. I tried.” I lifted my eyebrows and cocked my head a little to one side for emphasis. I really wanted him to understand that it hadn’t been my choice to not have something done about it. “I mean, I knew I wasn’t going to be in a position to get pregnant any time soon, but I just wanted to have it done. I think it was something I felt like I could have control over, and I really needed that.” His face showed his understanding, his empathy. It also showed, with the lowered brow and the tight jaw, that he was preparing himself to hear something he wouldn’t like. “Psychologically, I don’t know if that was the most well-adjusted approach, looking back on it now, but it also wasn’t a bad thing to do in its own right, so no harm, no foul. But, it didn’t matter anyway, because a week after his memorial I went back to my primary care provider on base, because I’m still on the insurance the military provides,” I explained, “either for the rest of my life or until I remarry, _if_ I remarry.” I had a sudden moment of panic, worried again that he would think I was trying to pigeonhole him into a future that he didn’t necessarily see. It was short-lived though, because he didn’t even seem to react. I continued, “But he told me he couldn’t do anything to permanently prevent me from having children without the permission of my husband.”

“But,” the furrow in his brow deepened and he cocked his head so that he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, “you don’t have a husband.”

“Right,” I nodded, big sweeping nods to show that he was starting to really pick up on the issue. “So then there shouldn’t be a problem. No husband, no need to worry about getting pregnant.”

“But, that’s … not … I mean,” he stopped, and the look on his face would have been comical under other circumstances. He looked truly baffled by what I’d just said, his eyebrows drawn together until deep wrinkles formed between them, his lips pursed, and his eyes drifting side-to-side, “you don’t have to be married to maybe get pregnant.”

“No, clearly, I’m very aware of that,” I didn’t even mean to do it, but I squeezed his hands in mine; there was no point pretending that we hadn’t been taking that risk (very, very carefully, but still, a risk nonetheless) for the past four months, and enjoying every second of it, “hence the religious birth control. Those were the doctor’s words, not mine. He told me that since I was no longer married, I didn’t need to worry about it anymore. But that if I ever got remarried, and my husband and I decided that it was something we both wanted, I should go back and speak to a physician at that time.”

“Okay, first of all, what kind of dumbass doctor believes, in the 21st century, that a gorgeous, intelligent, independent, _grown ass woman_ ,” I surprised myself by hicciping around a giggle and I looked down and bit both my lips between my teeth; it wasn’t an appropriate time to smile, because he was being so incredibly sincere and passionate in his defense of me, but I couldn’t help it when he used that phrase that he had so clearly picked up from me, _“_ can’t possibly be having sex without a husband? Is he that stupid, or that judgmental? And second of all, not that this matters, because it’s your fucking body and you should be able to do whatever the hell you want with it, husband or not, medical condition or not, but did he not understand the risks to you? Was it a different doctor than the one you’d seen before?”

I shook my head, all traces of my smile gone again. “Nope. Same doctor. He knew. But apparently that’s ‘standard procedure’.”

“And you couldn’t go to another doctor.” That was another statement that probably should have been a question, but he already knew the answer.

“With my insurance, I have to go to an on-base doctor before I can go anywhere else. And it’s not like they’re going to give me a referral for a procedure that goes against _their_ procedures.”

He sighed. “Well, I don’t think you’re going to be on that insurance for the rest of your life,” he paused for a couple seconds, cleared his throat, looked down to watch his thumbs trace over the backs of my fingers, “but if you don’t want to wait for that, I can help. I’m sure between my family and me, we can find you a great doctor up here somewhere, and I’ll help financially too, if you need. It’s not a problem.” 

I sucked in a breath, propping my legs up so that they tented over his thighs and drawing back from him a little more, enough that my arms pulled away from his chest and only my hands stayed in contact with him. I didn’t mean to, it was an involuntary movement. It was just that what he was offering was a lot, more than I was comfortable accepting. I loved him, and I really, really hoped that we had a long future ahead of us. But, as much as I’d managed, thanks to his tenderness and reassurances, to get past much of my fear that our relationship was going to end that morning, I still didn’t know exactly how much of a future he saw for us, beyond our next couple planned visits. The idea of him paying for a medical procedure, especially one of that nature, didn’t sit well with me, _wouldn’t_ sit well with me unless and until I felt more confident that he wanted to keep me around as much as I wanted to stay around.

He pressed his eyes closed and shook his head. “No, right, I’m sorry. I don’t want to overstep or anything.” He turned my hands so my palms rested flat on his chest and slid his hands down my arms to my elbows. He pulled gently, urging me carefully back to him. I didn’t resist, letting him pull me against his chest until he could rest his chin on the top of my head as he spoke. “And I understand why you wouldn’t be comfortable getting some big financial support from me right now, I just, I just want to be able to do something to help.” He sighed and moved his hands from my arms to my back, not stopping until they wrapped all the way around me; he held me so close it felt like he was holding his own elbows in his hands. He turned to nuzzle his cheek into my hair and left it there as he went on. “This whole thing is fucked up, all of it. So just, whatever you need, whatever you _want_ , that you’re comfortable with me doing, you just have to tell me.”

I thought for a second and traced his collarbones with my fingertips. Finally, I asked him, “Are you sure you’re okay with this? Us, moving forward, knowing this?”

He scoffed and I felt my hair flutter a little. “Aside from being really pissed at that fucking doctor, and a healthcare system that allows that shit to happen, and really, _really_ sorry that you’ve been carrying this around, scared to tell me,” he tightened his arms around me for a second and turned his head to kiss the top of mine before resting his cheek right back where his lips had just been, “I don’t feel any different now than I did when I woke up. And for the record, that feeling was _so fucking happy to open my eyes and see you across my pillow_.”

I leaned in even closer, tilting my chin forward to kiss the first skin I came to: the base of his throat. It wasn’t audible, but I could feel the vibration of a small hum. “Then there’s nothing else I need from you.”

He shifted his arms to keep me from moving from where I was, and I brought my legs back in the way they’d been before, leaving me curled in a ball mostly in his lap. I slid my hands from his chest to his ribs and around his back and wiggled until I fit just right against him. As always, he couldn’t keep his hands still, so one hand came up to the back of my head to play with my hair and the other fell low on my hip, where his thumb slipped under the hem of the top to the Christmas pajamas his mom had given me, the ones that coordinated with the pajamas everyone in the family had been given as our Christmas Eve gifts, and traced figure eights into my skin. We’d allowed for a fairly large buffer when we’d decided what time the alarm should wake us up; we’d known we would want some time, just the two of us, before we joined everyone else for me to say my goodbyes. I hated that we’d spent that time so far the way that we had, but I figured we had a few more minutes at least before we had to leave our cocoon. I planned to use every second just _being_ with him, letting his warmth seep into me, willing him to feel how much I loved him, how much I wanted him, how terrified I still was, deep down, that he deserved, and wanted, what I couldn’t give him.


	2. A Time for Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to let go - let go of the anxiety, and the fear, the feeling that him being with me meant him giving up something he wanted, something he deserved - and I was trying so, so hard to do that. But it was easier said than done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two picks up just a few minutes after chapter one.

We didn’t get to sit that way, him wrapped around me, literally and figuratively holding me together, as long as I would have liked. After only a couple minutes I felt him reach over to the nightstand and out of the corner of the eye that wasn’t obscured by having my face pressed against the skin of his neck and shoulder, I saw him turn the alarm clock toward us so he could read the display. He sighed and pressed the button to turn the music completely off. He pressed his lips into my hair one more time then held onto my shoulders so he could pull me away enough to look down into my face. “You feel like going down for breakfast with the gang?” He rubbed his thumbs over my shoulders, “I can make up an excuse for you if not. I’ll say I’m being selfish and want to keep you all to myself. We can go out somewhere before I take you to the airport.” He was sort of joking, but his face was so sincere it almost made my heart hurt. 

“No,” I shook my head and gave him the best smile I could manage, “that sounds nice, breakfast with the family. I should see them, _want_ to see them, before I go.”

He nodded and the look of concern didn’t quite leave his face. “Okay, well, whenever you’re ready, we can go down.” I nodded and started to shift, turning to pull my legs off him and back to my own side of the bed so I could crawl out of it, but he stopped me with a hand on the outside of my knee. “Hey,” his eyes shone when I looked into them and my heart beat a little faster in the second-long gap between his words, “I love you.”

I realized for the first time that he was scared too. The possibility hadn't even occurred to me before then, and it made me feel selfish. I didn't know exactly what he was scared _of,_ maybe that I was going to push him away, that I was holding onto other big things that I wasn't telling him, maybe even of his own feelings about the situation. But there was no question that what I saw in his eyes was, unmistakably, fear. I changed direction and instead of continuing to move away, I turned back toward him. I rested my hands on his shoulders to steady myself as I shifted then came up onto my knees and pulled one leg across his so I was straddling his lap, sitting back midway down his thighs. “I love you too,” I told him as I settled there, then wrapped my arms around his neck to lean in and press my lips against his, our first real kiss of the morning. His chest rose with the deep breath he pulled in as he sat up a little straighter, meeting my kiss more fully and bringing our chests together with his arms around my back, holding me tight against him.

He took control, kissing me again and again, quick little pecks alternating with longer, lingering kisses, all of them soft and gentle and sweet. And I’ll be damned if my eyes didn’t fill, yet again, with tears. It was a mix of a million things, but the main, overwhelming one was relief - relief at believing, finally, that he really wasn’t going anywhere, not because of what I’d told him, anyway, and not any time soon. I knew the exact moment he felt the tears on his own skin, because his left arm tightened around my lower back, drawing me in tighter against him, and his right hand came up to curl around the back of my neck and hold me in place. He kissed me a few more times, the last one a bit longer and a bit firmer than all the others, and when he pulled away, he kept his hand on my neck, holding me steady, and nudged my nose with his to turn my head to the side. He nearly whispered, his lips moving across my cheek, “I got you, sweet girl. We’re a team, your stuff is our stuff. Don’t forget that.”

I nodded when he turned so that we were cheek-to-cheek, and when I went still he kissed my temple, right in front of my hair, then pulled back to look me in the eye. He was waiting for me to actually tell him that I’d heard him, that it had sunk in. "I'll try not to. Thank you."

"Always, baby girl." He winked then smiled at me as he pulled the bottom of my top up to pat the moisture from my face. He covered my nose with it for a second like he wanted me to blow into it and I rolled my eyes at him. He grinned a little bigger. “No? Okay then,” he lowered the shirt back to my waist and smoothed the fabric over my hips.

I wanted to change, maybe even shower, before we went down for breakfast, but Chris insisted I shouldn’t, that everyone else would be in their pajamas still, and that his mom would be thrilled that I was so comfortable, so at home in her house, that I would do the same. So I settled for combing my fingers through my hair and tying it back into a quick braid while he threw on the t-shirt he’d worn the day before. He also grabbed the thick, fuzzy socks that had come with his red and green flannel pj pants, finding my reindeer ones at the foot of the bed and balling them up to throw at me one-by-one. He stuck his tongue out at me when I just batted them out of the air before picking them up and pulling them onto my feet.

As soon as we opened the guest room door we were hit by the smell of coffee and bacon. It was strong enough that I knew both had been going for a while, and I hoped we hadn’t kept Mrs. Evans waiting. She was at the stove with her back to us when we got to the kitchen, but she heard us come in, even with our padded, socked feet. "Good morning, kids!” she chirped, pulling a couple pieces of toast from the toaster to add to the stack she already had before turning to us. “I'm making-” she stopped and drew in a quick breath when she looked at me, “-oh, are you okay, sweetheart? You look … is everything okay?" She took a small step toward us but left her hand on the counter at her side, and even though she was speaking to me, her eyes were on Chris, her brow furrowed with worry.

I regretted letting him talk me out of that shower. Maybe it would have washed away, or at least diminished, the evidence of the many, many tears I’d cried that morning. I was sure I was a puffy, splotchy mess. "Yeah, I'm fine.” I gave her a little smile and a shrug as if to say it was no big deal. “I just woke up with a migraine. It happens sometimes." I hated to lie to her, but I wasn’t about to tell her the full truth right then. And besides, it was partially true; I did sometimes wake up with migraines, and they did often make me look almost as bad as I imagined I must have looked then.

Some of the tension left her body, her shoulders relaxing, and she took another step toward us, palms up to me. Her face still showed concern, though. "Oh no, what can I do? Do you have food triggers? Tell me what I can fix you that will make it better, or at least not worse. I've made some coffee, I know sometimes caffeine helps. But I can make you some tea if that's better?"

I let her capture my hands in hers and once she had I squeezed. "It’s okay, really, I feel much better now. This guy takes good care of me." I looked up at Chris, standing just over my shoulder, one hand on the small of my back and the other tucked into his pants pocket.

"Yeah?" she asked, and her eyes darted from mine to his, where they stayed.

"Yeah. Definitely.” I gave her hands one more quick squeeze then dropped them and took a step back into Chris’s hand. “And coffee sounds wonderful."

He pressed against my back, trying to direct me toward the chair he’d just pulled out from the table with the hand that had been in his pocket. "I'll get it. Have a seat."

"Chris-"

"I got it.” He spun the chair a little then stepped behind me and gripped my shoulders from behind, steering me toward the chair then pushing me, gently, but with no question as to his intent, down. “Sit.” I tried to look annoyed when I tilted my head back to look up at him, but his smirk, and the kiss he bent to drop onto my forehead, told me I probably wasn’t doing a very good job. He went to the counter, where he grabbed a mug from an upper cabinet and started to pour me a cup of the coffee we’d smelled when we came out of the bedroom. 

His mom went to his side, looked over her shoulder at me with a small smile, then turned back to him and asked, "Did you do this?" I could tell she thought she was speaking quietly enough that I wouldn’t hear her, because her voice had dropped into a lower register and she was careful to keep her back to me.

"The coffee?” He teased, “No, you did, crazy." He bumped her with his hip before walking around her to the fridge for the cream he knew I’d want. She followed him.

"Christopher."

He sighed. "Mother."

"Tell me you didn't fuck something up."

He finished pouring the cream into my coffee before he answered, setting it down a little too hard on the counter and turning to look over at me where I picked at invisible lint on my pants. I wouldn’t have listened, if I’d had any other option short of leaving the room. I knew he knew I could hear them, though, because he gave me an apologetic almost-smile before turning back to his mom and resting a hand on her shoulder to make up for the annoyance he’d displayed before. "No mom, I didn’t fuck anything up. I promise. She woke up not feeling well."

“But she’s feeling better now?”

“She says she is.” He turned to put the cream back in the fridge.

"Do you believe her?" 

He froze for a second in front of the open fridge, his hand still on the door handle. Finally he nodded just twice. "Yeah, mostly.” He closed the door and turned to lean his hip against the counter and look down at his mom, my coffee cradled in both hands. “She likes to act like she's doing better than she is, sometimes, because she doesn't like to let people help her, doesn't want to be a burden." I couldn't see her face, but the way Chris tilted his head and held one hand, palm out, up to her told me she had a less-than-great reaction to that. "I’m working on it."

She reached for him and closed a hand around one of his wrists. "Keep working."

"Yes ma'am." He leaned down to kiss the top of her head then came to stand behind me, first setting the coffee in front of me, then grabbing the back of the chair to push me up to the table, and finally leaning down to kiss my cheek. 

Chris also insisted on fixing my plate for me. I didn’t love being treated like I was sick or injured when I wasn’t, but I did love giving in to his attention and letting him take care of me completely, something I didn’t normally allow myself to do. He was halfway through putting way too much food on my plate when all three kids came barreling into the kitchen. The boys ran for their grandmother - and the food - but his niece came straight to me, wrapping her arms around my waist when I pushed my chair back from the table and opened my arms. “Hey you! Good morning!”

“Good morning,” she answered in her sweet, quiet little voice. It wasn’t that she couldn’t be loud - she could definitely hold her own with the rest of the Evans clan - but when it was just her and me, she was usually much quieter. “Can I sit with you?”

“Um, yeah.” I lowered my eyebrows and pursed my lips a little as if to say, _duh_ . “Obviously.” I pushed my chair out a little more and helped her climb up into my lap. “Excuse me,” I called, loud enough to be heard over Chris’s younger nephew directing his grandmother as to what to put on his plate and arguing with his brother over the last Mickey Mouse pancake ( _I don’t WANT Goofy! Grandma, he said I AM Goofy!_ ), “Uncle Chris, we’re gonna need to make that two plates over here.” I wrinkled my nose at his niece when she grinned up at me.

“Yes ma’am,” he called back without turning away from the counter. “Anything for my two best girls.”

A couple minutes later, during which his niece had compared the penguins on her pajamas to the reindeer on mine, pointing out all the ways our two sets were similar, both boys practically tumbled to the table, plates in hand and followed by their uncle. “Alright ladies, your feasts await,” Chris lowered the plates, one loaded with a small helping of scrambled eggs and a pancake he’d managed to turn into a reindeer with whipped cream eyes, a chocolate chip nose, and bacon antlers, and the other piled too high with eggs, toast, and far too much bacon, onto the table in front of us with a flourish and a bow at the end. (I had a sneaking suspicion that giving me way too much bacon was his way of ensuring he had access to as much as he wanted.) He disappeared for a second then came back with his own plate, looking around the table in mock confusion before finally pretending to glare at the little girl on my lap. “You stole my seat.”

She giggled up at him around a mouthful of eggs (she was saving her pancake masterpiece for last, my kinda girl). “You can’t sit on her lap.”

“Why not?”

“Because. You’re too big. You’ll crush her.”

“Rude,” he told her, sticking out his tongue before moving to stand in front of the younger of her two brothers, dragging the chair out from under the table with his foot. “Fine, I guess I’ll just sit here.” His nephew squealed and kicked at the backs of his legs, but Chris kept going, lowering himself until he was no more than an inch above the boy’s wriggling body. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he stopped and stood again, “is someone sitting here?” He only laughed as his nephew yelled at him and his mother joined us at the table, saying nothing and shaking her head at her son and grandson. “Fine, I guess I’ll take this one.” He crossed behind me toward the empty chair at my right, but before he sat down, he leaned to kiss his niece on the cheek then put his lips right next to my ear so that it looked like he was doing the same to me. Instead, he whispered, “Funny, _you’ve_ never complained about having me on top of you.” I choked a little on the piece of toast I’d just bitten off and I felt my cheeks flare with heat. His mom looked across the table at me with concern, but I just waved her off while avoiding her eyes. Instead I glared over at Chris as he dropped into his chair and dragged mine a little closer, smirking the whole time.

Breakfast was fun, joyful, as things always were with his family. But as the meal went on, my mood dropped a little, partially because I just didn’t want to leave, but also partially because my brain went back to that place where I looked around the table and saw not only what I wouldn’t have - because really, I’d been okay with that for a long time at that point, that acceptance was part of what had led to me being the school-mom I was to so many of my adopted kids - but what I couldn’t give Chris, what he so deserved, and, based on how happy he was and what I already knew about him, what he wanted.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that he saw the shift as it was happening. He drained the juice from his glass in one long gulp and handed it to his niece, asking her to go refill it for him. Once she was off my lap and on her way to the fridge, he hooked his foot around the leg of my chair and pulled it even closer, not stopping until the wooden seats of our chairs bumped one another. He draped his arm over my shoulder and hugged me to him. “Stop that,” he murmured into my ear, looking at me seriously when I cut my eyes over to him. “I see the wheels turning. Stop. I love them. I love you. I love this. And this is enough. I _promise_.”

I only nodded then leaned into him when he pressed his forehead against my hair. It wasn’t the time or place to bring the issue back up, but more than that, I was focusing on letting go - letting go of the anxiety and the fear and trusting him, trusting _us_. I knew him well enough after a year and a half to know that he wouldn’t lie to me, and also that if things started to change on his end, he wouldn’t string me along or waste my time. Unlike me a lot of the time, he was a great communicator. So, I worked to let go. I did excuse myself soon after that, though, because time was running short until we had to leave for me to get to the airport on time and I still needed a shower. It’s not like we could make the shower a joint affair, not at his mom’s, not with her and the kids downstairs, so I encouraged Chris to stay with them until they also had to get moving to get the kids home. I gave my hugs and said my goodbyes at the breakfast table since I knew they would probably be gone by the time I made it back downstairs.

When I came back into the guest room from the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a tshirt with my favorite University of Kentucky hoodie, carrying my towel and pajamas in a bundle in my arms, Chris was sitting at the foot of the now-made bed with his own towel folded next to him, scrolling through his phone.

"I'm sorry about that," he told me when I lowered myself onto the bed next to him after dropping my laundry onto the top of my suitcase. I would let him take the towel to the laundry with his after he showered, but I’d have to pack my pajamas dirty. Unless, of course, I left them there, but I didn’t want to give them up, and as much as I already knew I wanted to spend many more Christmases with at least him, if not his whole family, I wasn’t quite ready to bank on him wanting the same. Even if I was _letting go_.

"About what?"

He sighed and shook his head a little. "Talking about you, in front of you. I think mom thinks she's more discreet than she is."

I grinned and bumped my shoulder against his. "Or she just wants me to know that if it comes down to it, she'll take my side over yours."

"Valid possibility," he laughed. "She's pretty set on keeping you around." The way he lowered his head and looked up at me, almost shy, through his lashes implied that he was set on the same thing. I didn't ask, because it felt like “letting go” would mean trusting him and being content to leave it at that for the time being. I really, really hoped that’s what it meant, though.

"Seriously though, it's okay. I was trying not to listen, but …" I trailed off at the end and looked at him apologetically.

He nodded. "Kitchen's not that big. "

"I mean, it's bigger than mine. " I shrugged. "But yeah, not really big enough for privacy, not at Evans volume. And it really is okay. Her concern is sweet."

He reached over to squeeze my knee then stood and headed for his own small overnight bag across the room. "She's crazy about you," he told me over his shoulder.

I couldn’t help but smile. "Me too."

“You’re crazy about you?” He laughed at his own joke as he started pulling clothes out of his bag and draping them over his shoulder. I reached for one of the decorative pillows behind me on the bed and chucked it at his back.

“Haha, smart ass. You know what I mean.” 

He continued to chuckle as he tossed his bag back to the floor then turned and headed back to me. "I meant what I said down there,” he told me when he stood right in front of me, wedging himself between my knees and cupping my chin with the hand that wasn’t holding his clothes secure on his shoulder. “I know you can take care of yourself, and I know you've spent a good part of your life doing that, even before you were truly on your own. And I don't want to take that away from you. But I do want to help, when you need me to. Or want me to. I want to make sure you know that you don’t have to take care of yourself, by yourself." I didn’t miss the fact that it was his second time that morning to make some version of that promise, first to his mom, then to me.

I closed my eyes for just a second when his hand slid up onto my cheek, and I leaned into it. Even once I'd opened my eyes I stayed that way, my head tilted slightly to the side and resting in his palm. "I want you to know I'm working, too."

"I know you are." His thumb glided over my cheekbone, from the corner of my eye down toward my nose and back. "Work in progress, right? Not just you, us."

"I love you."

"So fucking much," he finished the sentiment after waiting silently while I turned to kiss first his palm then the inside of his wrist, then he slid his hand through my hair to the back of my head. He leaned down until we were forehead-to-forehead and nose-to-nose, lowering his voice to a quiet, intimate level, even though no one else was in the room, maybe even in the house, by that point. "You know we’re good, right? I’m not going anywhere unless you make me."

“Thank you." I sandwiched his cheeks between my palms and leaned in to kiss him. "That means everything." I kissed him again, holding my lips to his a little longer to seal the moment, then tried to lighten the mood a little, smirking as I pulled away. "Right now, can I make you go get a shower?” He gasped in mock offense when I moved my hands to his shoulders to push him away. He pretended to be angry, narrowing his eyes and spinning on his heel, but before he had a chance to storm away I smacked him on the ass and he turned and shot me a wink over his shoulder. 

Chris had left the bedroom door open when he went to shower. When he returned, I was standing with my back to the door, my suitcase on the bed in front of me so I could check it one last time, and a little bit just so I could re-fold everything, passing the time and avoiding actually thinking about what I was doing and the fact that I was about to have to leave. I jumped a little when he first spoke, but the rich, familiar timbre of his voice calmed me almost as soon as it had startled me. “God I wish you could stay. Are you sure you have to go?”

I blew out all my breath and dropped my chin to my chest then watched him cross the room to shove his wadded up pajamas into his bag. “School starts back tomorrow.”

“They can survive without you for a day or two. Or ten.” He came to stand behind me, resting his hands on my hips and his chin on my shoulder. 

I turned and pecked a quick kiss on his cheek, darting to face forward again before he had a chance to distract me. “So can you.”

“See, I’m not so sure about that one.” He slid his hands across my lower stomach until his arms wrapped around me and he leaned some of his weight against my back.

“Two weeks. That’s it.”

“Sixteen days," he pouted into my ear, counting the exact number of days until he'd be in Virginia, two days before the one-year anniversary of us crossing the line from friends to so much more; so much better. I suspected he was planning something - he'd been a little too eager to tuck me into bed the night before and go back down to have a drink with his mom, and there had been a few moments of secrecy, just looks, mostly, between them over breakfast - but I really had no idea what it might be. I tried not to think too much about it, because he’d complained before that I was too hard to surprise.

I laughed at him a little, but I actually loved it, and he knew as much. “Close enough.”

“It’s really not, though.” He sighed and collapsed a little more onto me and I just shook my head at him and turned my attention back to my suitcase. I didn't like it any more than he did, but I really did have to go, and if we didn't leave within the next 15 minutes I would start to stress about the airport and security. “Fine. Go do your job or whatever.” He spun away from me until we were side-to-side, me still facing the bed and him facing the door, and flopped onto the bed on his back, playing with the handle of the suitcase as I smoothed my winter coat, too bulky and cumbersome to travel in, over the top of everything else and zipped the bag closed. 

“Mmm, so supportive.” I smirked down at him and he stuck his tongue out at me. “Well," I lifted my eyebrows and trailed my fingertips from his knee up his thigh as far as I could reach, "that’s one way to try to get me to stay.”

“Yeah?" He grinned sinfully and pushed himself up onto his elbows, "Is it working?”

I hummed, “I wish. But I still gotta go to work. Gotta teach the kiddos.”

“Fine." He dropped back again, his head bouncing a little on the mattress, "I guess I’ll share you with them." He groaned, whined almost, as he pushed himself off the bed and lifted the suitcase easily off the mattress, setting it on the floor between our feet. "But we should probably get going before I change my mind.”

I had been right about the kids and Mrs. Evans being gone by the time we made it out of the guestroom, showered, dressed, and packed. It saddened me that I wouldn’t get to see them again, but it definitely made it easier to get out the door. Chris refused to let me do anything other than carry my purse and walk to the car, and when we were in the driveway he loaded my large suitcase and my smaller carry-on into the back of the car then turned to wind his arms around my shoulders and press his lips into my hair. We both knew that standing in front of his mom’s house was our last chance for a proper goodbye; we wouldn’t take a chance on more than a quick hug at the airport. We’d been really fortunate so far to avoid media attention, aside from a few pictures of me and of us at the premiere of the movie that had brought us together and a couple at Disney World where no one seemed to recognize me as the same person. That lack of attention had allowed us to live the last year in a bubble just big enough for him, me, and our actual friends and families, a bubble that we weren’t ready to leave.

I fisted my hands around the soft fabric of his sweater at his sides, just above his hips, and though I didn’t need to, thanks to his arms pressing me tight to his chest, I pulled him against me. “Thank you.”

My temple rested on his collarbone and his chin bobbed against the top of my head as he spoke, “That’s what I’m here for.”

I closed my eyes and turned my head to press my face into his chest, breathing him in. Then I pushed up onto my toes and tilted my head back to kiss the soft skin under his chin, just where his beard ended. “I mean, for everything.” 

He held me a little tighter. “I know. And it’s still what I’m here for.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All pieces in this collection will be an anthology of connected one-shots that exist within the same universe; and they officially no longer follow chronological order. They may eventually be reorganized into novel-format, but that would be quite a way down the road.

**Author's Note:**

> All pieces in this collection will be an anthology of connected one-shots that exist within the same universe; and they officially no longer follow chronological order. They may eventually be reorganized into novel-format, but that would be quite a way down the road.
> 
> Some parts of this are based (loosely or pretty firmly) on "real life," and others aren't. One thing that IS based on real life is that a woman I know, a military spouse, was told by her doctor that he had to have her husband's permission to perform any procedures that were considered "permanent birth control." I just don't want anyone to think that I made up something like that just to bash the healthcare system or anything along those lines.


End file.
